9th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A (가해 연중 제9주일)
1st Reading: Deuteronomy 11:18, 26-28, 32
A further exhortation
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[18] “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your
soul; and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as
frontlets between your eyes.
A blessing and a curse
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[26] “Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: [27] the blessing,
if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this
day, [28] and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your
God, but turn aside from the way which I command you this day, to go after other
gods which you have not known. [32] [Y]ou shall be careful to do all the statutes
and the ordinances which I set before you this day.
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Commentary:
11:26-32. The ceremony of blessing and cursing will be explained fully in chap-
ters 27-28; and Joshua will in due course perform it (cf. Josh 8:30-35). It does not
consist so much in blessing or cursing as in proclaiming a summary of God’s com-
mandments and ordinances in terms like “Cursed be he who does not do them”,
“Blessed be he who obeys them.” Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal are situated the
south-west and north-east respectively of the Samaritan city of Shechem and are
separated by a narrow valley. In later times the Samaritans will come to regard
Gerizim as a holy mountain, building a temple there when the Jews came back
from Babylon (537 BC), to rival the temple of Jerusalem; although the temple was
destroyed towards the end of the 2nd century BC, the Samaritans continued to
see this mountain as a place of worship and sacrifice. The Samaritan woman
mentions it in her conversation with our Lord (cf. Jn 4:20).
2nd Reading: Romans 3:21-25, 28
Righteousness, a Free Gift through Faith in Christ
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[21] But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law,
although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, [22] the righteousness of
God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction
[23] since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24] they are justi-
fied by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus,
[25] whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had
passed over former sins[.]
[28] For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.
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Commentary:
21-22. The doctrinal richness of this text and of the whole passage (vv. 21-26)
is here condensed in a way very typical of St Paul's style. He explains how justi-
fication operates: God the Father, the source of all good, by his redemptive
decree is the "efficient cause" of our salvation; Jesus Christ, by shedding his
blood on the Cross, merits this salvation for us; faith is the instrument by which
the Redemption becomes effective in the individual person.
The righteousness of God is the action by which God makes people righteous,
or just (cf. St Augustine, "De Spiritu Et Littera", IX, 15). This righteousness was
originally proclaimed in the books of the Old Testament--the Law and the Pro-
phets--but it has now been made manifest in Christ and in the Gospel. Salvation
does not depend on fulfillment of the Mosaic Law, for that Law is not sufficient
to justify anyone: only faith in Jesus Christ can work salvation.
"If anyone says that, without divine grace through Jesus Christ, man can be justi-
fied before God by his own works, whether they were done by his natural powers
or by the light of the teaching of the Law: let him be anathema" (Council of Trent,
"De Iustificatione", can. 1).
It is not the law, then, which saves, but "faith in Jesus Christ". This expression
should be interpreted in line with the unanimous and constant teaching of the
Church, which is that "faith is the beginning of human salvation", and a person's
will must cooperate with faith to prepare the ground for the grace of justification
(cf. ibid., chap. 8 and can. 9).
23-25. The Apostle first describes the elements that go to make up the mystery
of faith (vv. 23-25): all men need to be liberated from sin; God the Father has a
redemptive plan, which is carried out by the atoning and bloody sacrifice of
Christ's death; faith is a necessary condition for sharing in the Redemption
wrought by Christ; the sacrifice of the Cross is part and parcel of the History of
Salvation: before the Incarnation of the Word, God patiently put up with men's
sins; in the fullness of time he chose--through Christ's sacrifice--to require full
satisfaction for those sins so that men might be enabled to become truly righ-
teous in God's eyes and God's perfections become more manifest.
"The Cross of Christ, on which the Son, consubstantial with the Father, renders
full justice to God, is also a radical revelation of mercy, that is, of the love that
goes against what constitutes the very root of evil in the history of man--against
sin and death" (John Paul II, "Dives In Misericordia", 8).
23. "Fall short of the glory of God": this shows the position man is in when he is
in a state of sin. Because he has not the life of grace in him, he is not properly
orientated towards his supernatural end, is deprived of the right to heaven that
sanctifying grace confers, and consequently does not have these divine perfec-
tions which supernatural life gives him.
24. All have been justified, that is, all have been made "righteous" (cf. 1 :17).
This justification is the result of a gratuitous gift of God which St Paul describes
in a way which reinforces his point ("grace", "as a gift"): this identifies the source
of the gift as God's loving-kindness and it also shows the new state in which jus-
tification places a person so important is this statement--that grace is a gift
which God gives without merit on our part--that the Council of Trent, when using
this text from St Paul, made a point of explaining what it meant: that is, that
nothing which precedes justification (whether it be faith, or morals) merits the
grace by which man is justified (cf. Rom 11:16; Council of Trent, "De Iustifi-
catione", chap. 8).
This new kind of life, whose motor is grace, requires free and active cooperation
on man's part; by that cooperation a person in the state of grace obtains merit
through his actions: "For such is God's goodness to men that he wills that his
gifts be our merits, and that he will grant us an eternal reward for what he has
given us" ("Indiculus", chap. 9). The fact that grace is a gratuitous gift of God
does not mean that man does not have an obligation to respond to it: we are
not justified by keeping the Law or by a decision of our free will; however, justi-
fication does not happen without our cooperation; grace strengthens our will
and helps it freely to keep the Law (cf. St Augustine, "De Spiritu Et Littera",
IX, 15).
Justification by grace is attained "through the redemption which is in Jesus
Christ". The Council of Trent teaches that when a sinner is justified there is "a
passing from the state in which man is born a son of the first Adam, to the state
of grace and adoption as sons of God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ
our Savior" ("De Iustificatione", chap. 4). This has been made possible because
our Lord saved us by giving himself up as our ransom. The Greek word translated
as "redemption" refers to the ransom money paid to free a person from slavery.
Christ has freed us from the slavery of sin, paying the necessary ransom (cf.
Rom 6:23). By sacrificing himself for us, Christ has become our master or owner,
who mediates between the Father and the whole human race: "Let us all take
refuge in Christ; let us have recourse to God to free us from sin: let us put our-
selves up for sale in order to be redeemed by his blood. For the Lord says, 'You
were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money' (Is 52:3); with-
out spending a penny of your inheritance, for I have paid on your behalf. This is
what the Lord says: He paid the price, not with silver but with his blood" (St
Augustine, "In Ioann. Evang.", 41, 4).
Our very creation means that we belong totally to God the Father and therefore
also to Christ, insofar as he is God, but "as man, he is also for many reasons
appropriately called 'Lord'. First, because he is our Redeemer, who delivered us
from sin, he deservedly acquired the power by which he truly is and is called our
Lord" ("St Pius V Catechism", I, 3, 11).
And so, through the Incarnation, whose climax was Christ's redemptive sacrifice,
"God gave human life the dimension that he intended man to have from his first
beginning; he has granted that dimension definitively [...] and he has granted it
also with the bounty that enables us, in considering the original sin and the
whole history of the sins of humanity, and in considering the errors of the human
intellect, will and heart, to repeat with amazement the words of the sacred Litur-
gy: 'O happy fault...which gained us so great a Redeemer!'" (John Paul II,
"Redemptor Hominis", 1).
25. The "expiation" was the cover or mercy seat of the Ark, which stood in the
center of the Holy of Holies in the Temple (cf. Exod 25:17-22). It was made of
beaten gold and had a cherub at either end, each facing the other. It had two
functions: one was to act as God's throne (cf. Ps 80:2; 99:1), from which he
spoke to Moses during the time of the exodus from Egypt (cf. Num 7:89; Ex.
37:6); the other was to entreat God to pardon sin through a rite of expiatory
sacrifice on the feast of the Day of Atonement (cf. Lev 16): on that day the
High Priest sprinkled the mercy seat with the blood of animals sacrificed as
victims, to obtain forgiveness of sins for priest and people.
St Paul asserts that God has established Jesus as the true expiation, of which
the mercy seat in the Old Testament was merely a figure.
No angel or man could ever atone for the immense evil that sin is--an offense
to the infinite majesty of God. The Blessed Trinity decided "that the Son of God,
whose power is infinite, clothed in the weakness of our flesh, should remove the
infinite weight of sin and reconcile us to God in his Blood" ("St Pius V Cate-
chism", I, 3, 3).
This expiatory sacrifice, prefigured in the bloody sacrificial rites of the Old Testa-
ment (cf. Lev 16:1 ff), was announced by John the Baptist when he pointed to
Jesus as the Lamb of God (cf. Jn 1:29 and note); and Jesus himself referred to
the sacrifice of the Cross when he said that the Son of man had come "to give
his life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20:28).
This sacrifice is renewed daily in the Holy Mass, one of the purposes of which
is atonement, as the Liturgy itself states: "Lord, may this sacrifice once offered
on the cross to take away the sins of the world now free us from our sins" ("Ro-
man Missal", Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, prayer over the gifts).
27-31. These words are addressed to the same imaginary interlocutor as ap-
peared at the beginning of the chapter. Although he is Lord of all nations, God
showed special preference for the people of Israel. Relying on this, the Jews
wrongly thought that only they could attain blessedness because only they en-
joyed God's favor. This led them to look down on other peoples. After the coming
of Christ, they no longer have any basis for this pride: St John Chrysostom ex-
plains that it had simply become outdated, superseded (cf. "Hom. On Rom", 7),
for God had set up a single way of salvation for all men--the "principle of faith"
which the Apostle refers to. This new way means that Jews must forget their
ancient pride and become humble, for God has opened the gates of salvation to
all mankind.
Consequently, no one--not even the Jew--is justified by works of the Law. What
justifies a person is faith: not faith alone, as Luther wrongly argued, but the faith
which works through charity (cf. Gal 5:6); faith which is not presumptuous self-
confidence in one's own merits, but a firm and ready acceptance of all that God
has revealed, faith which moves one to place one's hope in Christ's merits and to
repent of one's sins. Therefore it will be "by faith"--not by circumcision--that the
Jews will be justified, and it will be "through their faith" that the uncircumcised
will attain salvation. From this it might appear as though the Law had been re-
voked; but that is not the case: faith ratifies the Law gives it its true meaning and
raises it to perfection. For, through being a preparation for the Gospel, the Mosaic
Law receives from Christ the fullness it was lacking: the precept of charity reveals
the meaning which God gave the law but which lay hidden until Christ made it
manifest, for "love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom 13:10). St Paul in a way sum-
marizes all this teaching in v. 28, which is the key statement in the passage.
Gospel Reading: Matthew 7:21-29
Doing the Will of God
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(Jesus said to His disciples,) [21] "Not every one who says to Me, `Lord, Lord,'
shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who
is in Heaven. [22] On that day many will say to Me, `Lord, Lord, did we not pro-
phesy in Your name, and cast out demons in Your name, and do many mighty
works in Your name?' [23] And then I will declare to them, `I never knew you;
depart from Me, you evildoers.'
Building on Rock
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[24] "Every one then who hears these words of Mine and does them will be like a
wise man who built his house upon the rock; [25] and the rain fell, and the floods
came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because
it had been founded on the rock. [26] And every one who hears these words of
mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon
the sand; [27] and the rain fell, and the floods came, and winds blew and beat
against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it."
[28] And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at
His teaching, [29] for He taught them as one who had authority, and not as their
scribes.
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Commentary:
21-23. To be genuine, prayer must be accompanied by a persevering effort to do
God's will. Similarly, in order to do His will it is not enough to speak about the
things of God: there must consistency between what one preaches--what one
says--and what one does: "The Kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in
power" (1 Corinthians 4:20); "Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, de-
ceiving yourselves" (James 1:22).
Christians, "holding loyally to the Gospel, enriched by its resources, and joining
forces with all who love and practice justice, have shouldered a weighty task on
earth and they must render an account of it to Him who will judge all men on the
last day. Not every one who says, `Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven,
but those who do the will of the Father, and who manfully put their hands to the
work" (Vatican II, "Gaudium Et Spes", 93).
To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, to be holy, it is not enough, then, to speak
eloquently about holiness. One has to practice what one preaches, to produce
fruit which accords with one's words. Fray Luis de Leon puts it very graphically:
"Notice that to be a good Christian it is not enough just to pray and fast and hear
Mass; God must find you faithful, like another Job or Abraham, in times of tribu-
lation" ("Guide for Sinners", Book 1, Part 2, Chapter 21).
Even if a person exercises an ecclesiastical ministry that does not assure his
holiness; he needs to practice the virtues he preaches. Besides, we know from
experience that any Christian (clerical, religious or lay) who does not strive to
act in accordance with the demands of the faith he professes, begins to weaken
in his faith and eventually parts company also with the teaching of the Church.
Anyone who does not live in accordance with what he says, ends up saying
things which are contrary to faith.
The authority with which Jesus speaks in these verses reveals Him as sovereign
Judge of the living and the dead. No Old Testament prophet ever spoke with His
authority.
22. "That day": a technical formula in biblical language meaning the day of the
Judgment of the Lord or the Last Judgment.
23. This passage refers to the Judgment where Jesus will be the Judge. The sa-
cred text uses a verb which means the public proclamation of a truth. Since in
this case Jesus Christ is the Judge who makes the declaration, it takes the form
of a judicial sentence.
24-27. These verses constitute the positive side of the previous passage. A
person who tries to put Christ's teaching into practice, even if he experiences
personal difficulties or lives during times of upheaval in the life of the Church or
is surrounded by error, will stay firm in the faith, like the wise man who builds
his house on rock.
Also, if we are to stay strong in times of difficulty, we need, when things are calm
and peaceful, to accept little contradictions with a good grace, to be very refined
in our relationship with God and with others, and to perform the duties of our state
in life in a spirit of loyalty and abnegation. By acting in this way we are laying
down a good foundation, maintaining the edifice of our spiritual life and repairing
any cracks which make their appearance.
28-29. Jesus' listeners could clearly see the radical difference between the style
of teaching of the scribes and Pharisees, and the conviction and confidence with
which Jesus spoke. There is nothing tentative about His words; they leave no
room for doubt.
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase
The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.
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